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Experts look to Australia's Aborigines for weather help

SYDNEY, Australia (Reuters) -- When the bearded dragon lizard sits upright
and points its head to the sky, it is going to rain the next day. If a flock of
currawongs flies overhead you've only got four hours to get the washing off the
line.

If the queen wattle blooms heavily, bull ants abandon their tree nests for
mounds of dirt, or meat ants cover nests with tiny, heat-reflecting quartz
stones, then bushfires are coming.

Sounds like mumbo-jumbo?

Not to Australia's Bureau of Meteorology, which hopes to tap into the tens of
thousands of years of Aboriginal weather knowledge to help it expand its
understanding of the island continent's harsh climate.

Aboriginal ideas about the weather can be starkly different.

Unlike the conventional European notion of four seasons -- summer, autumn,
winter and spring -- Aborigines in different parts of Australia count as little
as two or as many as six, ...